American Delirium: A Novel

by Betina González, Heather Cleary (Translator)

Overview

"One dizzying vortex, combining colonial history, generational delusions and psychedelic drug trips. . . . An eerily familiar vision of American madness and decay."
—The New York Times Book Review

From award-winning novelist Argentine Betina González, American Delirium is a dizzying, luminous English-language debut about an American town overrun by a mysterious hallucinogen and the collision of three unexpected characters through the mayhem.

In a small Midwestern city, the deer population starts attacking people. So Beryl, a feisty senior and ex-hippie with a troubled past, decides to take matters into her own hands, training a squad of fellow retirees to hunt the animals down and to prove to society they’re capable of more than playing bingo.

At the same time, a group of protesters decides to abandon the “system” and live in the woods, leaving behind the demands of modern life—including their children. Nine-year-old Berenice never thought her mother would join the dropouts, but she’s been gone for several days, leaving only a few clues about her past for Berenice to piece together.

Vik, a taxidermist at the natural history museum and an immigrant from the Caribbean, is beginning to see the connections among the dropouts, the deer, and the discord. He’s not normally the type to speak up, but when he finds a woman living in his closet, he’s forced to get involved. Each of these engrossing characters holds a key to the city’s unraveling—despite living on the margins of society—and just as their lives start to spin out of control, they rescue one another in surprising ways.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250621283
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	02/16/2021
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Betina González is the bestselling author of several novels and short story collections, for which she has won several awards, including the prestigious Premio Tusquets. American Delirium is her first book to be published in English. González earned her MFA in bilingual creative writing at the University of Texas at El Paso and her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh. She lives in Buenos Aires and teaches at the University of Buenos Aires and New York University Buenos Aires.

Heather Cleary translated César Rendueles’s Sociophobia and Sergio Chejfec’s The Planets and The Dark, among other novels and poetry collections. Her translations have been finalists for the National Translation Award and the Best Translated Book Award, and she holds a PhD in Latin American and Iberian cultures from Columbia University. She lives in New York and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

Editorial Reviews

★ 10/19/2020

Argentinian González anatomizes in her skillful English-language debut an American community’s pursuit of enlightenment and the violence and madness left in its wake. The novel takes place in a moribund, near-future unnamed U.S. city where only the university and the natural history museum have survived a devastating depression. The residents, increasingly attuned to “early cultural signs of the final imbalance, of how the entire planet would eventually rise up against us,” have embraced a more resourceful lifestyle by taking up hunting. Among them, Vik, an ailing taxidermist from the fictional Caribbean island of Coloma, discovers that a possibly dangerous intruder has been living in his closet; the acerbic Beryl instructs those, like her, over 70, in marksmanship after crazed deer begin assaulting people; and a young girl, Berenice, looks for a new caretaker after her mother abandons her to join a cultish back-to-nature group. The story lines gradually converge around the prevalence of a hallucinogenic Coloma plant called albaria that “closes your eyes and sets you down in a ray of light where time doesn’t exist.” This has the makings of a zany psychedelic romp, but instead the delirium is marvelously controlled and administered in doses just potent enough to ease patient readers into this off-kilter world. González’s distorted utopian vision is a memorable trip. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Betina Gonzalez writes with tremendous verve. What a sharp, audacious novel about the escalating delirium of our current era. Heather Cleary's translation recreates the quicksilver scenes of American Delirium with superb artistry." —Idra Novey, author of Those Who Knew

“This is a beautiful and ruthless novel that asks readers to dive into it with their whole selves, to see themselves in its violence and its flickers of hope. It is, like few are, a book that will stay with you long after you’ve finished it.” —Yuri Herrera, author of Signs Preceding the End of the World, winner of the 2016 Best Translated Book Award

“This has the makings of a zany psychedelic romp, but instead the delirium is marvelously controlled and administered in doses just potent enough to ease patient readers into this off-kilter world. González’s distorted utopian vision is a memorable trip.” —Publishers Weekly, *starred review*

“Betina Gonzalez has created a gorgeous novel where the real and the mystical walk hand in hand, and occasionally give each other a sharp jab. The book's interwoven storylines delve not only into the world of botanical psychedelics, but into the psychedelia of ordinary life—the surrealism of aging, the hallucinatory nature of desire, the hauntings of love and loneliness and death. As Gonzalez’s characters navigate a world where plants inspire revolution and animals are possessed by homicidal rage, they ask us to consider whether human beings are perhaps the least natural creatures this planet has to offer.” —Anjali Sachdeva, author of All the Names They Used for God

“American Delirium traces an illuminating journey into the uncanny core of contemporary society. A bold, smart, atmospheric exploration of the unsettling reality that lies beneath our false sense of comfort.” —Carlos Fonseca, author of Natural History

“With [González's] capacity to inform, her sense of analysis, of proportion, of measure, of the balance of something so complex as a novel, I predict a bright future for her.” —Nobel laureate José Saramago

“Strange and surreal, bewitching but understated, American Delirium captures the uncanny in the everyday, a cryptic glimpse at society and our boundless contradictions. From runaway parents to attacking deer, Betina González's English-language debut is remarkable. Beautifully translated by Heather Cleary and perfect for fans of vibrant and daring writers like César Aira and Roque Larraquy.” —Mark Haber, bookseller at Brazos Bookstore (Houston) and author of Reinhardt's Garden

From the Publisher

★ 2020-12-15
Three characters’ lives converge after their unnamed city is beset by a series of weird events.

As González’s English-language debut begins, three parallel narratives are intercut. Taxidermist Vik, a chronically ill immigrant from an invented island in the Caribbean, discovers through video surveillance that a strange woman is sneaking into his home while he’s at work. When he catches her unawares one day, she locks herself in his closet—and stays. Meanwhile, his museum colleague, Beryl, an ex-commune hippie, gathers a group of fellow senior citizens together to enact aggressive action when crazed deer start attacking people in the city. And then there is little Berenice, who, waking up one day to her mother’s sudden absence, believes she has become a “left-behind,” a child whose parents have become “dropouts,” resistance movement adherents who “were rejecting the duty of parenthood and returning the children to their rightful guardians”: the government. Bit by bit, these narratives come together as they reveal the three characters’ connections to each other and to a mysterious (fictional) plant called albaria, a hallucinogen that set their world on its current skewed path. If this sounds wacky, it is, but it’s wacky in the grim, smart way of a Coen brothers film. González, who lives in Argentina, uses absurdity to show us that there is the thinnest of lines between utopia and dystopia, all without ever naming any real-world correlates (aside from the novel’s pointed title and an even more pointed epigraph from Baudrillard about “the fiction of America”). Ultimately, this is a novel about the fictions—those myths about age, race, family, nationality, sexuality, health—that we tell ourselves. And how, as one of the characters says, “The destruction of a harmful system is an act of love.”

An uncategorizable novel that manages to be both zany and profound.

Kirkus Reviews